“You told me that the best kind of loveplay—the best fantasy for a woman—was to be kissed for hours and hours and hours without any actual—”
Rain groaned. “Do you have to repeat back to me every single word I ever say?”
He smiled and continued. “Mayhap that’s what I should do—kiss you in hundreds of different ways ’til you can stand no more, then start all over again and—”
“That’s enough,” Rain interrupted, feeling a hot blush move up her neck to her cheeks. “You don’t have to go any further. I know what you’re referring to.”
“What, sweetling?” Selik asked, a wicked smile turning up his lips, as he drew out his words sensuously. “Methinks ’twould be a fitting punishment to fulfill your fantasy. And prove you wrong. Because I know for fact ’tis not the best fantasy. Mine is.”
Rain gasped.
“Yea, best you take a deep breath, angel. You will need it afore this night is through.”
Chapter Eleven
“You think kissing me will be a punishment?” Rain asked incredulously, then laughed. “You haven’t been listening to me very well. I told you I lo—”
Selik clamped a hand over her mouth, his other hand neatly shifting so that it held both her hands in his clasp above her head. He refused to let her finish her declaration. How foolish of him to think that he could deny her love if he never heard the words!
“Yea, that is all I have been doing the last few sennights—listening to your tongue rattle on about this, that, and every other bloody damn thing.”
“Mrmpfh! Glumk! Argst!” You think I talk too much, do you? Let me go a minute, and I’ll tell you a thing or two.
“Holy Thor! Ne’er was there another woman on the face of the earth who thought she knew so much about everything. And did not mind telling one and all what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and where. For the love of all the saints! ’Tis time to put an end to it. You need to be taught a lesson well and good.”
Still holding his right hand over her mouth, he leaned down and brushed his lips across her forehead. “That is the way, sweet shrew. Calm thyself and smooth out those frown lines.”
She immediately glowered even harder, and he chuckled appreciatively at her defiance. “Go ahead, then. Wear yourself out in the beginning with these little fights. Every good warrior knows to save his energy for the big battle.”
“Damift!” Dammit. Let me up.
“What was that, dearling? Didst thou ask for more? Ah, well, ne’er wouldst I be the one to deny a lover her due rights.”
His lips swept over her eyelids, across her cheekbones, along the edge of her jaw; Rain’s lips parted involuntarily under Selik’s palm. How could lips that looked so firm feel so soft? She tried to think of something else to stop herself from arching up for more—ice cubes…tonsillectomies…trees…vasectomies. But she could not get past the delicious sensation of wet, warm lips grazing her cool flesh. Or was it cool lips grazing her warm flesh? She could not distinguish one from the other in the frenzy of tingling sensations he ignited wherever his lips touched.
“If I release my hand from your mouth, do you promise not to speak?” Selik whispered, his breath teasing the wisps of hair on her neck that had come loose from her braid.
“Yecklmqcipekmnfklt!” Areyououtofyoureverlovinmind!
“Nay? Ah, well, I will have to direct my kisses elsewhere then.”
Selik brushed featherlight kisses along the curve of her neck with little nips and butterfly kisses. When he got to the pulse behind her right ear, he sucked softly on the sweet flesh until he undoubtedly raised a passion mark, then blew softly as if to dry the skin.
When his hot breath inadvertently blew into her extra-sensitive ear, Rain’s eyes widened with alarm, her body stiffening with resistance. She couldn’t let him know how erotically sensitive her ears were. That chink in her armor could prove her undoing.
But Selik knew. Rain saw the dawning awareness in his hazy gray eyes and in the slow, silky smile that crept across his face.
“So, ’tis the ears for you, sweetling. Mayhap this is one of those fifty-seven erotic points on a woman’s body you boasted of once. Just nod your head if I am right.”
Rain shook her head vehemently. Good Lord! Had the man memorized every dumb thing she ever said?
Selik chuckled with glee, not believing her one bit. “Yea, for some women, the sweet spot is behind the knees, right at the crease. For others, between the thighs. Then there are the tips of the breasts. Even the arches of the feet. But I think I will start my exploration with your ears, dearling. What say you to that?”
She groaned.
“Ah, well, you do not have to say aught. I will kiss each place on your skin until I discover each and every one of your erotic weaknesses.”
“Gdmfppppft.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Selik said as he bit her gently on the earlobe and began a slow—excruciatingly slow—examination of the outer rim of her ear.
“Like a seashell it is, sweetling—all shades of white and pale pink,” he whispered huskily as he nipped the edges, taking small, teasing bites. “I wonder, do you taste as good?” Rain groaned and tried to avert her head, to no avail. His tongue traced a sensuous path along the secret whorls whose nerve endings connected to a hot, pulsing region deep in her body.
“Yea, I think I have discovered number one of fifty-seven,” Selik said with a soft laugh and began to push the tip of his wet tongue as deeply into her ear as possible. In and out, he thrust with slow, masterful strokes, and Rain’s hips arched upward instinctively. Although she pulled back immediately, that one contact with his ever hardening arousal caused that nub of sensation between her legs to swell and ache for his touch. She scrunched her eyes shut tightly, refusing to let him see how little it took for him to turn her mindless with desire.
Then he moved to her other ear, taking endless minutes kissing and nibbling and stroking with his tongue. When he began to repeat the thrusting motion, Rain’s arms and legs went rigid with opposition, trying to fight off the spiral of fluttery, swelling spasms she felt growing in intensity between her legs.
Humiliation over her quick arousal heated Rain’s flesh. She felt like some love-starved wallflower just yearning for a man’s touch.
“Open your eyes,” Selik demanded in a whisper near her ear. Even his breath caused little electric shocks of pleasure to shoot through her body.
Rain refused.
Selik pressed his hard maleness lightly against her swollen center.
And she lost the battle.
Rain’s eyes shot open, locking with his in carnal embrace, and the spiral spun and spun and exploded between her legs, and shot out with fiery sparks to ignite all the nerve endings in her body.
Selik made a low, hissing sound and removed his hand from her mouth, quickly putting it under her body, cupping her buttocks, and tipping her womanhood slightly against his thrusting hips. Rain couldn’t stop her low, keening wail of pleasure.
When her body slumped back in satiation, Selik gently wiped tears from under both her eyes. “Why do you weep?” he asked softly.
“Mortification.”
“You jest. I bring you pleasure and you feel humiliated?”
“You did it to degrade me.”
“I did? Ah, so now you read minds as well, my guardian angel.”
Rain searched his face, just noticing the continuing gleam of desire in his eyes, the beautiful lips slack with passion.
“I climaxed alone. That makes me feel cheap…wanton.”
“Climaxed? Hmmm. A good word, I think,” he said, rolling his eyebrows. Then he grew more serious. “But do not think I did not gain from your climax, as well. A woman’s pleasure is a man’s greatest gift in the lovemaking. Besides, we have only just begun, and I am saving myself for better things to come.”
“Selik, no. I don’t want this.”
“Neither do I,” he said rawly, gazing at her hungrily as the long fingers of his right ha
nd circled the column of her neck, holding it in place for his lowering lips. His other hand still held her arms immobile above her head. Inch by agonizingly slow inch, his lips lowered to hers. Chest to breast, she could feel the wild beating of his heart in their close embrace. “’Tis a dangerous game I play, and well I know it. But I cannot stop.”
“Neither can I,” Rain whispered desperately, her breath caressing his lips a hairsbreadth away. “Neither can I.”
He traced the outline of her lips with the tip of his tongue and sighed with appreciation as he blew softly against her to dry his own wetness on her flesh. “Your heart is racing fiercely, angel.”
“So is yours.”
“Are you frightened, sweetling?”
“Yes. Excited and frightened.”
He nodded in understanding.
“And you, Selik? Are you as calm as you appear to be?”
He laughed, low and throaty, as he nibbled at her bottom lip, then brushed it roughly with the calloused pad of his thumb. “My lady Rain, I am aroused mightily, and well you know it,” he said gruffly. “And I am frightened beyond aught that I ever imagined.”
“You? Frightened? Never!”
Selik growled in answer and brushed his lips back and forth across hers, shaping and testing, until he molded her lips to the pliancy he wanted. Then his mouth turned hungry, rapacious in its all-devouring need for her succor.
Rain moaned with supreme satisfaction at the Tightness of his lips on hers and returned his kisses with equal fervor. Selik consumed her, using his lips and teeth and tongue to ravage her helpless mouth. His already firm lips grew turgid with desire.
When he finally tore his lips away from hers, gasping for breath, she cried out, “No, don’t stop,” then made a low sound of dismay, almost like pain.
He murmured against her lips, “Open your lips for me.”
She obliged.
He seared her with his tongue, plunging deep into her mouth, filling her, then leaving her empty and yearning.
“You taste of passion and ageless woman,” he whispered rawly between strokes.
She captured his tongue and sucked greedily, then responded huskily, “Your heat is burning me alive.”
When his kisses deepened and would not end, when he showed her over and over that she’d never really been kissed before in her entire life, that he marked the beginning and the end, she writhed from side to side, but Selik wouldn’t let her take any initiative. He held her firmly in place. Rain lost all sense of time and place. But not person. No, she knew exactly who she was, and exactly who her lover was. Selik. Her love. Her soulmate.
Her soft sounds of pleasure and resistance spurred Selik on, and his erection grew huge against her. His silvery eyes blazed forth his passionate need. “Sweet witch, I fear you have enchanted me.”
Soft laughter, born of her own pleasure and exultation over her ability to please this man she loved, bubbled forth from her lips. “Then I will haunt you forever, my love.”
Desire, hot and molten, erupted through Rain, and the nerve endings in her skin, from her scalp to her toes, were sensitized to the point of explosion. Selik tunneled the fingers of one hand through her hair and angled her lace upward for the increasingly frenzied thrusts of his tongue. Rain no longer knew or cared where his lips ended or hers began. Desire escalated and roiled through her blood. She sucked in her stomach and braced her legs in instinctive resistance to the increasing lack of control her body was exhibiting.
“Rain. Rain, are you listening to me?”
Her eyelids fluttered open, and she was stunned at the utter beauty of Selik’s face awash with the pure freedom of his passion for her.
“Rain, sweetling, look at me. Stop fighting your feelings. Relax. Oh, Lord…like that, yea, just so…now, are you listening?”
When she nodded her head, barely able to breathe for the overpowering sensations racking her body, he continued in a low, sensual voice. “This is as close to consummation as we are going to come. Nay, do not moan so. It will be my undoing. A kiss is all I promised here today.”
She groaned, then laughed. “If this is your idea of ‘just a kiss,’ then God spare me from your idea of making love.”
“Yea, well, I have been told that my love skills are quite superior,” he said with a smug grin. “Now, heed me well, wench, because I want you to do as I order.”
“Yes, master.”
He grinned in evil satisfaction. “You are learning, wench. Now, when I put my tongue in your mouth this time, I want you to pretend that my manhood is entering your womanhood. God’s blood! I love the way your lips part when my love words arouse you.”
Rain licked her suddenly dry lips.
“When I thrust my tongue inside your mouth, you will pretend—”
“Please, Selik,” Rain protested on a groan, “I can use my imagination.”
“Can you?” he asked softly, moving closer, then stopped when he noticed the defiant tilt of her chin. “What?”
“I wonder what you will be imagining?”
“When?”
“When I return the favor and penetrate your mouth with my tongue. When I thrust in and out of your—”
Selik cut off her words with a hiss of startled pleasure and then with lips that taught her too well that he was a master at this particular art.
When the heat of his kisses drove her almost to the point of insanity once again, when deep within the hot, molten folds of her body a slow rhythm of increasing, thrumming need began, Rain knew that it didn’t matter if Selik came from another time. It didn’t matter that he was beastly at times. It didn’t matter that he often made her angry or hurt her deeply. He was beautiful. And he was hers—her love for all time. Even if this moment was all the time they would have.
“You are driving me mad. Never, never have I felt…ah, sweet Freya…holy Thor…” Selik’s hips slammed against her in perfect rhythm with the increasing thrusts of his tongue.
Red lights grew brighter and brighter behind Rain’s closed eyelids, then splintered into a kaleidoscope of a million exotic colors as a new pulse point lodged between her legs and convulsed against Selik’s hardness.
In a wondrous haze, Rain watched as Selik pulled her hips up off the cot and against him, arched his neck back, and cried out his raw release.
Rain must have lost consciousness for several moments in the aftershocks of the spasms rippling through her body, for when she became aware of her surroundings once again, her arms were free and Selik was slumped against her body. His face nuzzled against her neck, Selik breathed evenly and deeply—fast asleep.
“Well, you could have waited ’til after your bath.”
“What did you say?” Selik said thickly, rolling over on his side, taking Rain with him, kissing the curve of her neck.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“I did.”
They both looked up to see Gyda standing in the doorway, a pile of linens in her arms and several of the male servants standing behind her with a large tub and buckets of water, ogling them lasciviously.
Selik sat up immediately. To Rain’s regret, Selik’s sensuous mood was broken by Gyda’s entry. He was probably reminded of his fiancée, Tyra. As he stood and testily directed the servants on where to place the tub, Rain saw that his gray eyes had turned stormy again and the muscles of his arms had roped with tension.
Gyda and the servants left.
As steam wafted up from the huge tub, Selik turned back to her. “Will you bathe first?”
Rain lifted her chin defiantly, her face flaming. “With you standing here watching like a voyeur? Not in a million years!”
“Ah, well! I will go first then,” he agreed easily, but pointed a finger at her warningly. “Do you but move one tiny bit off that pallet, you will be in this tub with me. And I swear on the blood of all the gods that you will have soap coming out of every opening in your body.”
“Bully,” Rain muttered.
“What did you say?” Seli
k asked, moving toward her menacingly.
“Goody. I said, ‘goody’.”
Selik laughed ruefully. “A most horrifying thought just occurred to me. I am beginning to understand your lackwit words.”
Selik dropped his braies then, preparing to sink into the tub. Despite her best intentions, Rain’s eyes caressed his wide shoulders and bunching muscles. She yearned to trace the letters, R-A-G-E, that he had carved into his forearm. Moving lower, she admired his narrow waist and hips and tightly curved buttocks.
He started to turn, and Rain forgot to breathe. She burst into a fit of choking.
Smirking, Selik sank into the hot water, taking great pleasure in taunting her with his body and with the fact that he was enjoying himself immensely while she sat there wallowing in the dirt of their day-long journey.
Not to be undone, Rain carefully reached over for her carryall on the floor, making sure she didn’t actually move her body, since Selik’s narrowed eyes watched her like a hawk. With childish petulance, Rain pulled out a new roll of cherry Lifesavers and popped one into her mouth.
Selik’s mouth dropped open with disbelief. “You lied,” he accused her. “You said they were gone.”
“They were, but I found another package in the back pocket of my slacks.”
“Oh, you are a deceitful witch. First you break oath; then you lie.”
“Give me a break, Selik. It’s just a lousy piece of candy.” But Rain sucked loudly, pretending to take special pleasure in the flavor.
“How would you like to have a Lifesaver up your nose?”
“Don’t be so ungracious.” Rain smiled sweetly and pulled out her Rubik’s Cube. While Selik soaped his body and hair, she solved the puzzle, over and over and over and over. She thought she heard him grind his teeth once before he ducked his head under the water and stayed there for an extra long time.
Rain woke early the next morning, realizing as she scanned the little room that Selik hadn’t slept with her. Still groggy, she went over to the door. She tried it once, twice, three times, finally accepting with disbelief the fact that she was locked in. “I’ll kill the bloody barbarian,” she seethed.